# Bridge to Terabithia

**Author:** Katherine Paterson
**Lexile:** 810L
**Grade range:** Grades 4–6
**Age range:** 9–12
**First published:** 1977
**Page count:** 163
**Genre:** Children's Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780064401845`
**ISBN-10:** `0064401847`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/bridge-to-terabithia
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Fifth-grader Jess Aarons, a rural Virginian, befriends Leslie Burke, a new neighbor, and they invent a secret woodland kingdom. Paterson's Newbery-winning novel handles friendship and grief at a middle-grade level and is widely assigned in 4th- and 5th-grade English.

## Themes

- friendship
- imagination
- grief and loss
- rural childhood
- class
- family dynamics

## Content notes

- death of a child
- family tension
- grief

Common Sense Media age recommendation: 10+

## Where this book is assigned

### Common Core State Standards (ELA)

- **recommended** · 5th grade — [source: Common Core aligned summer-reading list — rising 5th grade](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **recommended** · 5th grade — [source: CCSS ELA Appendix B, grades 4-5 exemplar](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **recommended** · 5th grade · Virginia — [source: VA SOL grade 5 aligned text (Virginia setting)](https://www.doe.virginia.gov/)

## Banned / challenged record

Documented removals or formal challenges in at least one school district in 1 state: TX. Source: [PEN America's Index of School Book Bans](https://pen.org/banned-book-list/) 2022-2024.

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